Körmendi János: Nagyér (Nagymajláth) története a telepítéstől az örökváltsági szerződés megkötéséig 1843–1878. A Makói Múzeum Füzetei 62. (Makó, 1980)

Summary

SUMMARY íhe description of scientific claim of Nagymajláth's (now Nagyér, Csongrád county) history of ihe first 50 years is motivated — according to professional opinions — by the fact that no such "deep-boring" has been done concerning any former tobacco gardener communities settled directly by the treasury. This publication tries to justify the reason for the existence of mycroanalyses nowadays. As to the method clarifying the conditions of the settling the use of genealogy to analyse the cottars' society is new. Present historic view-points of inquiry are reflected at certain parts of the economic, legal and sociological approach. From the point of view of common history the significant chapters contain references to numerous settlements of today's Csongrád and Békés counties. All the tobacco gardener communities of former Csongrád county are alluded to: the earlier villages settled in the 1810s by tenants as well as the so-called later communities of treasury settling (in the 1840s). Among these latter the formation of Nagymajláth's history can be considered typical until the turn of the century but in many respects even up to the present. In each case the settling in groups can be proved (this means that the seed of the population of a village was provided by a group of 30 or 40 or 60 families coming from other communities or towns). The author comes to the conclusion that these settlements were a kind of waste-pipe for the cottars of the surrounding and over-crowded market-towns in the first half of the 19th century. By the end of the century the territories that had been formerly uninhabited became overpopulated. This was one of the reasons of the agrarian socialist movements. At the presentation of economic life the conditions of monocultural farming are described in some chapters analysing the penetration of price and money conditions into the life of a village. Tobacco growing in halves was not lucrative at the time discussed, partly due to the soil quality, partly because of the price formation. The life of every community was based on one plant, so the community's existence, successes or failure were due to the plant's prosperity. The economic balance of the people of Nagymajláth was determined by tobacco from 1844 to 1848 and corn from the 1850s to the end of the 1880s. Subsequently, the sales conditions of onion and sugar-beet were determinative. These were the so-called „money affording" plants. The researches regarding the composition and the movements of the population lead to the conclusion that there were enormous migrations between the regions of the South of the Hungarian plain and the other parts of the country during the 19th century, due to the prevailing conditions of prosperity and employment. We can duly state that it has certain respects for the present, too. In the Nagymajláth gardeners' case the period investigated shows important changes from the legal point of view: from the year of the official settlement in 1843 to the concluding of the contract of fee simple in 1878 (during the period when the inner territories, the plough-land and the pasture could not be bought by the settlers, at least not by a treaty) the settlement was not considered a regular community. It was a phase between a temporary colony and an administrative unit having constitutional functions. Act XXII of 1873 raise J a new legal circumstance in this question and this rendered fee simple possible. In the case of the settled villages this meant the closing procedure of the emancipation of serfs completed from abo' e. 125.